A Public Service (You're Welcome)

Alert Readers will have noted my trepidation about The Situation In Japan. The reference yesterday to "great, black roiling clouds of radioactive dust" or that I wished to hell I'd never read Neville Shute's "On The Beach" (everybody dies.) Yes, I was showing The Fear.

To dispel lingering bits of Shute's book, I looked him up. He died in 1960! Atomic energy uses in the late '50s were primitive compared to today's! The book is more than 50 years old!

And then I heard about iodide tablets. The US Surgeon General, no less, recommended stocking up on them. Creating a run on drugstores across our fair land. I delved further. A solo type of radiation goes straight to our poor thyroids, but these tablets protect it. And I also remembered something else: governments lie.

Finally I came across some reasonable people at this Web site ki4u.com "You CAN Survive Radiation!" is their theme. I find this reassuring and assuming that you, too, will not fear what you know a lot about, here are some of their suggestions. The site has a great deal more information and, oh, yeah, funny you should ask -- they sell iodide tablets!

Stay home. You don't want to get caught halfway to your destination without a shelter of some sort.

Save water. Fill the bathtub, the kiddy pool, the water bed mattress -- you cannot have too much water.

What you want to do is put as much "stuff" (concrete, steel, wood, stone) between you and the dust. They recommend the center of your house, preferably a basement where you will build a nest of filled filing cabinets, boxes of books, the cedar chest, anything that you have that you can put between you and the dust.

Seek a four story (or less) building and go to the core of it. Use the underground parking lot. A structure with the greatest mass and distance between you and the dust is what you need.

Basically the above plus earthquake survival knowledge that everyone in California should know by now are about all you need.

Exposure for an hour to 500 roentgen (?) dust will kill you, but seven hours later gamma rays are only 1/10th as strong as they were. We could all probably do seven hours standing on our heads if it would save us. So, don't worry - be happy! (And practice your headstands.)